As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Sukhbinder Dhesy-Thind, MD, MSc, FRCPC, of Juravinski Cancer Centre, Hamilton Health Sciences, and colleagues, Cancer Care Ontario and ASCO have issued a clinical practice guideline on the use of adjuvant bisphosphonates and other bone-modifying...

WITHIN THE SPECTRUM of breast cancer subtypes, triple-negative disease is “particularly troubling,” but better scientific understanding of this malignancy is leading to advances in its treatment, according to breast cancer expert Nancy Davidson, MD.
Triple-negative breast cancer does not express...

DURING JULY, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) made a number of approvals and recommendations on a variety of oncology products.
Neratinib
ON JULY 1 7, the FDA approved neratinib (Nerlynx) for the extended adjuvant treatment of adult...

THE BODY OF EVIDENCE supporting the use of cell-cycle inhibitors in combination with endocrine therapy for estrogen receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer now has another agent in the spotlight. The phase III MONARCH 2 trial—reported at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting and by Sledge et al in the...

New recommendations on the use of the MammaPrint genomic test issued on July 10 will help guide decisions on adjuvant systemic therapy for women with early breast cancer. The recommendations update the ASCO 2016 clinical practice guideline on the use of biomarkers in these patients.
The guideline ...

The 10-year follow-up of the phase III TEAM trial has shown that exemestane alone and sequential tamoxifen/exemestane provide similar outcomes as adjuvant endocrine therapy in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive early breast cancer. The findings were reported in The Lancet...

An analysis of the GeparSixto trial in triple-negative breast cancer showed that adding carboplatin to neoadjuvant therapy improved pathologic complete response rate in patients without BRCA1/2 mutation and that response rates were higher overall in those with mutations, without additive effects...

On July 26, the European Commission (EC) approved fulvestrant (Falsodex) for the treatment of estrogen receptor–positive, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer in postmenopausal women not previously treated with endocrine therapy.
The EC approval is based on pivotal data from the...

A study in postmenopausal women in the French E3N prospective cohort indicated bisphosphonate use was not associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer. These findings were reported by Fournier et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Study Details
The study included 64,438 postmenopausal...

As reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Morton et al have identified gene loci associated with radiation-related risk of breast cancer in survivors of childhood cancer.
Study Details
The study was a genome-wide association study of breast cancer in female survivors of...

A West German Study Group phase II trial, reported by Harbeck et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, has shown a higher pathologic complete response rate with neoadjuvant ado-trastuzumab emtansine (formerly known as T-DM1; Kadcyla) with or without endocrine therapy vs trastuzumab (Herceptin)...

FOR PATIENTS WITH BREAST CANCER who have metastases to the central nervous system (CNS), clinicians should think twice before administering whole-brain radiotherapy, according to Kimberly Blackwell, MD, Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Duke University Medical...

A class of oral drugs for treating breast cancer known as cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitors are generally well-tolerated, with a manageable toxicity profile for most patients. This is the conclusion of a comprehensive review of toxicities and drug interactions related to this class of...

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind study comparing the long-term benefits of radiation therapy in women with breast cancer in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant settings. Their study, published by Poleszczuk et al in Breast Cancer Research, found that patients who have...

In an analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Esserman et al found that an ultralow-risk designation using the 70-gene MammaPrint assay is capable of identifying patients with node-negative disease who have a very low long-term risk of death from breast cancer after surgery without systemic therapy....

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved neratinib (Nerlynx) for the extended adjuvant treatment of adult patients with early-stage HER2-overexpressed/amplified breast cancer, to follow adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin)-based therapy.
ExteNET Trial
Approval was based on the ExteNET...

The Danish phase III DBCG 07-READ trial has shown no difference in disease-free survival with adjuvant docetaxel/cyclophosphamide vs epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, and docetaxel in patients with early TOP2A-normal breast cancer. These trial results were reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology...

On July 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted a new drug application (NDA) for abemaciclib, a cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitor, and gave the NDA a Priority Review designation. The NDA includes Eli Lilly and Company’s submission of abemaciclib for two indications: ...

New recommendations on the use of the MammaPrint genomic test issued on July 10 will help guide decisions on adjuvant systemic therapy for women with early breast cancer. The recommendations update the ASCO 2016 clinical practice guideline on the use of biomarkers in these patients.
The...

In an analysis of the UK cohort of the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study (IBIS-I) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Smith et al found similar effects of predefined symptoms on nonadherence in both tamoxifen and placebo recipients. IBIS-I randomized women at high risk of...

Largely based on studies demonstrating that letrozole can suppress plasma estradiol levels to a greater extent than anastrozole,1 the adjuvant activity of these endocrine agents were compared in 4,136 patients with node-positive breast cancer in the FACE trial. As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO ...

As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Ian E. Smith, MD, of The Royal Marsden Hospital and Institute of Cancer Research, and colleagues, final results of the phase III FACE trial showed no difference in disease-free or overall survival for adjuvant letrozole vs anastrozole in...

STUDY DISCUSSANT Leisha A. Emens, MD, PhD, of Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, entitled her remarks, “Target Practice in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer,” referring to the fact that there is currently no validated target in this aggressive...

The use of fat grafting as a tool for breast reconstruction following a mastectomy may improve breast satisfaction, psychosocial well-being, and sexual well-being in patients, according to a study published by Bennett et al in JAMA Surgery.
Fat grafting as an adjunct to breast reconstruction...

In the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, checkpoint inhibition is making inroads in both early- and late-stage disease, and the line of treatment and expression of the programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) could be important in determining outcomes, according to studies reported at the...

In oncology, sometimes we forget about the small, everyday things that can significantly impact a patient’s life. When patients are explained the side effects of chemotherapy and chemotherapy-induced alopecia, most women will cry or become visibly upset. When a woman loses her hair, it represents...

An interim analysis of the SCALP trial, reported in JAMA by Julie Nangia, MD, of Baylor College of Medicine, and colleagues, showed that use of a scalp-cooling device significantly reduced hair loss in women receiving chemotherapy for stage I or II breast cancer compared with no scalp cooling.1 The ...

Several breast cancer experts weighed in on the findings of the APHINITY trial. At an ASCO press briefing, Harold Burstein, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and breast cancer specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, pointed out that investigators estimated a ...

The results of the long-awaited APHINITY trial are in, and although the phase III study met its primary endpoint, it failed to establish dual HER2 blockade as the optimal adjuvant treatment for early HER2-positive breast cancer.
After 3 years of follow-up, the addition of pertuzumab (Perjeta) to...

Findings from a retrospective study showed that women who became pregnant after an early breast cancer diagnosis, including those with estrogen receptor–positive tumors, did not have a higher chance of cancer recurrence and death than those who did not become pregnant.1 Matteo Lambertini, MD, of...

Richard S. Finn, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, commented on MONARCH 2 and the field of cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibition in general in an interview with The ASCO Post.
“MONARCH 2 is confirmatory for the role of CDK4/6 inhibition in estrogen...

Formal discussant of this paper, Allison Kurian, MD, MSc, of Stanford University School of Medicine, said: “I think these results are practice-changing. Toxicity and quality of life were better with olaparib [Lynparza].”
Dr. Kurian noted that the study did not report correlative biomarkers for...

The PARP INHIBITOR olaparib (Lynparza) improved progression-free survival in women with HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer that was either hormone receptor–positive or triple-negative in patients who had a germline BRCA mutation.1,2 These results of the international, randomized, open-label,...

According to Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data, more than 260,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States in 2016, most of whom were diagnosed with early-stage (stage I or II) disease. For this demographic, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network®...

Fifteen years ago, my internist advised me to lose weight. But after seeing the yo-yo effects of dieting on friends and colleagues, I knew I would find the process of losing weight and gaining it back frustrating, so I ignored my physician’s advice. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed late this past...

Angela Hartley Brodie, PhD, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and an internationally recognized scientist whose groundbreaking cancer research is considered among the greatest advances in treating breast cancer, passed away on...

The emerging field of molecular pathology focuses on the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of genes and gene activity within organs and tissues. This information has transformed our thinking about the biologic diversity of breast cancers and has enhanced our treatment...

Breast cancer surgeon Monica Morrow, MD, came from a town in the far northeast reaches of suburban Philadelphia. “I guess because there were only two girls in our family, I was the son my father never had, and he reared me that way. When we were playing catch, if I missed the ball and got hit in...

In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Morrow et al found that the rates of surgery after initial lumpectomy for stage I or II breast cancer have decreased with dissemination of guidelines advocating a minimal negative surgical margin. A 2014 consensus statement of the Society of Surgical Oncology...

Simultaneous injections of the radiopharmaceuticals fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (F-18 FDG) and fluorine-18 sodium fluoride (F-18 NaF) followed by quantitative scanning significantly improved image quality and detection of bone metastases at a lower dose, according to research presented at...